In case you’re not in any tech drama groups, here’s some background for you. An employee at Google wrote a document and shared it internally. This document basically described in a not at all outrageous way how the employee felt about Google diversity culture, how positive racism was damaging to effective employment, and that the shaming culture surrounding this things made him feel sharing the thought and opinions he had outlined was not something he could do without being attacked and/or fired for it.

Of course people caught wind of this quickly. Some described the perfectly reasonable document as a manifesto to misogyny and hate-speech. The media didn’t hesitate to link this to right-wing politics somehow. But best of all? Google fired the guy. They fired the guy that voiced concern over not being able to safely voice his concerns regarding these topics.

There’s no way he didn’t know. There’s no way Google isn’t playing into his cards right now. Between blindly dismissive opposition and a pot of forced diversity at the point of boiling over, this is going to be a very interesting case to watch. My stance? I can totally get behind what the guy wrote. An environment in which these things can’t be seriously discussed without any one party accusing the other of social crimes is a very unhealthy one.

Let’s hope this doesn’t fizzle into nothing. It’d be good to see something come from this.
~ Fang

Comments

I’m with you in hoping that this doesn’t fizzle into nothing but it will. No one cares when a “disturbing right wing racist misogynist” is silenced. They cheer. It’ll kick up a fuss in our circles, but that’s about it.